What Crusaders for Liberty Are Up Against: Part II
By Randall Holcombe • Tuesday July 10, 2012 1:09 PM PDT • 14 Comments
Recently my fellow blogger Robert Higgs put up a post on The Beacon with this title, and I am following up with a post of the same name, after my attendance at the annual meeting of the Association for Heterodox Economics (AHE) last week.
The AHE is an organization of academic economists from throughout the world; the conference had 600 attendees from six continents. The AHE has a distinctly left-wing outlook on things. It is dominated by Marxists, post-Keynesians, greens, and feminist economists: in other words, economists who have anti-market and anti-capitalist views.
I have attended many conferences dominated by individuals with a free-market orientation. Some organizations worth noting, and supporting, along these lines are the Association of Private Enterprise Education, The Mont Pelerin Society, the Austrian Scholars Conference, and the Society for the Development of Austrian Economics. One nice thing about those conferences is that there is a feeling of comaraderie being among a large group of individuals with similar viewpoints on public policy and the appropriate role of government. Being among like-thinking individuals is a comfortable feeling.
Attending the AHE conference pushes me out of that comfort zone. Attendees are very intelligent and have serious academic research agendas aimed at undermining capitalism. There’s a lot of comaraderie at AHE too; but I’m not one of the comrades.
I find the conference intellectually interesting because it offers me the opportunity to hear the best arguments and latest research that promotes left-wing economic ideas. If I only attended conferences that attracted individuals with a free-market bent, I might be lulled into thinking that those ideas are the primary alternative to current economic policy. Either we continue with our current course of bigger government, leading to economic ruin, or we turn back the state to regain our freedoms and unleash the economic power of the market.
At the AHE conference the perspective is very different. Most attendees don’t see the current state of affairs as big government, but rather the legacy of neo-liberalism. While the term goes back to the 1930s, many AHE attendees see problems starting with the neo-liberal governments of Reagan and Thatcher in the 1980s that displaced the Progressive policies that blossomed in the 1960s and 1970s.
As they see it, current governments aren’t spiraling out of control, but rather are excessively constrained by neo-liberal policies initiated decades ago.
Readers of The Beacon are likely to see the current political alternatives as continuing with the out-of-control government we have today, or reigning in the state. Those at AHE see the alternatives as the current neo-liberal neutered government, or an expansion of government to correct the current inequities of the system and control the inefficiencies of capitalism.
In The Beacon post by Robert Higgs with the same title as mine, he was lamenting that crusaders for liberty are up against a population that has little interest in limited government or public policy. But there are people, like those who attended the AHE conference, who are serious about public policy and who are actively working to enlarge the scope of government. Don’t think that the alternative to the status quo is smaller government; many serious thinkers believe we already have smaller government, and are working to expand it.
Here’s another sobering thought. This was an academic conference, so the people in attendance are passing along their ideas to the world’s college students.
Tags: Budget and Tax Policy, Economics, Education, Europe, Free Market, Liberalism, Personal Liberty, Philosophy, Politics, Progressivism, Socialism, The State 
This sounds much like the meme that was so popular after the financial crisis hit, that all of these problems were due to deregulation, which was blamed on Reagan. And of course it did not help when Greenspan placed the blame on relying on the market to regulate itself.
D. Saul Weiner | Jul 10, 2012 | Reply
The bigger government anti-capitalists have won most of the battles over the past 100 years and are likely to win the war.
In the USA, many people agree that our federal government has become too big. When asked what they would eliminate, they name a few items that account for less that 5% of federal spending. Those people, however, are the same ones who after seeing something they don’t like demand more laws or programs to fix it.
I believe that rapid adoption of socialism-fascism-corporatism-favoritism will be best for the USA. The economy soon would collapse. The government would go broke. People would see the inequities in the system. There would be a chance (a small one) to rebuild with a small government that supports capitalism. This scenario could backfire and result in totalitarian socialism, but it offers a better chance at a more libertarian government than the death by ten thousand cuts we’ve been experiencing for decades.
MingoV | Jul 10, 2012 | Reply
Professor Holcombe...........I wonder how many of these financial and economic whizzes ever ran a business? I wonder how they would do trying to meet a payroll,run a production line,sell a product or service or,dare I say, earn a profit? I bet,10 to 1,that the “comrades” you describe couldn’t make an honest living in the American Free Enterprise System if their lives depended on it. With advisers like these no wonder the Nation is bankrupt.
libertarian jerry | Jul 10, 2012 | Reply
Jerry hit the mark with “make an HONEST living”. Most of the culprits, including Greenspan, Rubin,Summers, the Gramms, and the rest, are brilliant, but dishonest.
richard | Jul 11, 2012 | Reply
Jerry,
Why would these types care about running a business? To them, businesses are evil because they make profits. In the view of the Heterodox “economists,” all that is needed is the production function.
Once that function is known, then planners just have to stir in the factors of production, and since factors would be state-owned, there would be no barriers involved in moving those factors to their proper uses. Yes, people actually believe this stuff.
William Anderson | Jul 11, 2012 | Reply
William......They tried Heterodox Economics in the Soviet Union for over 70 years and in the end all that was accomplished were 45 million murdered citizens,a lowering of the standard of living for 90% of the population,a police state and 3 wasted generations of lives. You can add in China,most of Eastern Europe,Vietnam,Cambodia,Cuba and several other nations as well. Heterodox Economics is a fancy word for Collectivist Economics. I call it Socialism. Whether its socialism of the Left or socialism of the Right,it is still a centrally planned economy where property rights hardly exist. To briefly sum up, Socialism is an unworkable gutter philosophy championed by envy,ignorance and megalomania. Socialism attracts the scum of the earth who are delusional in their economic ideas and have only a desire to run everybody’s life in the Socialist vision of a “just” society.” It (Socialism) is based on violence and eventually terror. Anyone who believes in Heterodox Economics should not only be shunned but put on notice that what they believe in is criminal. Attending a meeting of the AHE is on the same moral plain as attending a meeting of the Klu Klux Klan or the American Nazi Party. These people(AHE members)may be called Academics but in reality they are fools.
libertarian jerry | Jul 12, 2012 | Reply
Jerry,
Your comment caught my attention because I’m an AHE member (everyone who pays the conference registration fee and attends the conference is given membership). To the degree that I “belong” to a group of heterodox economists, it is due to my association with the Austrian school, and there were at least half a dozen Austrian school economists in attendance.
But I don’t disagree with the overall thrust of your comment. Austrian school economists were a small minority at the meeting, and among other comments I heard, one person said that he thought Austrian economics was part of the mainstream, not a heterodox school (I wish that was more true), and another said he thought Austrian economics was an ideology, not a school of economic thought. That came from a self-proclaimed Marxist!
The AHE supposedly promotes pluralism, which gives all points of view a fair hearing, but my impression is that for an overwhelming majority of AHE participants, a fair hearing is only offered to those with very left-leaning political views. So, all-in-all, even though your comment equates me with a Klu Klux Klan member, a Nazi, and a fool, I pretty much agree with what you said.
I don’t think William’s comments were intended to support any heterodox ideas, Jerry, but rather to suggest that people who hold those views would not consider it a virtue to have been a part of the capitalist class.
Randall Holcombe | Jul 12, 2012 | Reply
Randall..........Sorry to lump you in with the Leftists,who you indicated,as having a large amount of input and control over the AHE agenda. It would seem that this organization has the same type of organizational views as the League of Women Voters. That is if you are an establishment Republican or Democrat your views will be allowed to be debated and discussed. If your a Libertarian or any other political philosophy you won’t even be invited to the debate. That’s control of the paradigm. Again Randall,sorry for any misunderstandings on the issue.
libertarian jerry | Jul 12, 2012 | Reply
No need to apologize, Jerry. I found some humor in your comment, and I assure you I was not offended by it. You lumped me in with the Leftists... but there I was, at the AHE conference with the Leftists!
Randall Holcombe | Jul 12, 2012 | Reply